“Well, I hope not!” laughed Elnora.  “If you’d seen me sneaking out before dawn, not to awaken mother and coming in with moths to make her think I’d been to the trees, you’d know it was a most especial occasion.”

“Then Philip understood two things:  Elnora’s mother did not know of the early morning trip to the city, and the girl had come to meet him to tell him so.

“You were a brick to do it!” he whispered as he closed the gate behind them.  “I’ll never forget you for it.  Thank you ever so much.”

“I did not do that for you,” said Elnora tersely.  “I did it mostly to preserve my own self-respect.  I saw you were forgetting.  If I did it for anything besides that, I did it for her.”

“Just look what I’ve brought!” said Philip, entering the arbour and greeting Mrs. Comstock.  “Borrowed it of the Bird Woman.  And it isn’t hers.  A rare edition of Catocalae with coloured plates.  I told her the best I could, and she said to try for Sappho here.  I suspect the Bird Woman will be out presently.  She was all excitement.”

Then they bent over the book together and with the mounted moth before them determined her family.  The Bird Woman did come later, and carried the moth away, to put into a book and Elnora and Philip were freshly filled with enthusiasm.

So these days were the beginning of the weeks that followed.  Six of them flying on Time’s wings, each filled to the brim with interest.  After June, the moth hunts grew less frequent; the fields and woods were searched for material for Elnora’s grade work.  The most absorbing occupation they found was in carrying out Mrs. Comstock’s suggestion to learn the vital thing for which each month was distinctive, and make that the key to the nature work.  They wrote out a list of the months, opposite each the things all of them could suggest which seemed to pertain to that month alone, and then tried to sift until they found something typical.  Mrs. Comstock was a great help.  Her mother had been Dutch and had brought from Holland numerous quaint sayings and superstitions easily traceable to Pliny’s Natural History; and in Mrs. Comstock’s early years in Ohio she had heard much Indian talk among her elders, so she knew the signs of each season, and sometimes they helped.  Always her practical thought and sterling common sense were useful.  When they were afield until exhausted they came back to the cabin for food, to prepare specimens and classify them, and to talk over the day.  Sometimes Philip brought books and read while Elnora and her mother worked, and every night Mrs. Comstock asked for the violin.  Her perfect hunger for music was sufficient evidence of how she had suffered without it.  So the days crept by, golden, filled with useful work and pure pleasure.

The grosbeak had led the family in the maple abroad and a second brood, in a wild grape vine clambering over the well, was almost ready for flight.  The dust lay thick on the country roads, the days grew warmer; summer was just poising to slip into fall, and Philip remained, coming each day as if he had belonged there always.